Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1501361
4 NEWS maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 14 JUNE 2023 4 NEWS Notary to Government and Public Registry Services in Gozo The Ministry for Gozo would like to inform the general public that the Notary to Government and the Public Registry services in Gozo, as from Wednesday the 21st of June 2023 and Friday the 30th of June 2023 respectively, will start being offered from the following address: 132, Ġorġ Borg Olivier Street, Victoria Gozo. Degiorgio brothers claim rights breach over refusal of prison leave ALFRED and George Degior- gio, who are serving 40-year prison sentences after admit- ting to having carried out the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, are threaten- ing to file court proceedings over a refusal to grant them prison leave. Lawyers for the two broth- ers filed a judicial protest this morning, against the Director of the Correctional Services Agency and the Prison Leave Advisory Board, in which they claim their clients were suf- fering a breach of their funda- mental rights, as the only two inmates who were being denied prison leave. The refusal of prison leave is discriminatory and the defend- ant Director and Board did not want to give an explanation for this refusal, reads the judicial protest, which goes on to state that "therefore it is clear that the reason behind this refusal is being kept secret because it is unjust." They described as "truly iron- ic" the fact that that although a recent report on Corradino prison published by Principal Forensic Psychologist Kevin Sammut Henwood details the efforts by CCF management to bring inmates closer to their families, the decisions they were taking in Alfred Degior- gio's case were diametrically opposed to it, preventing him from close contact with "the most important family member in his life." The fact that the brothers were being held in Division 5 also resulted in the denial of privileges normally grant- ed to inmates, such as work and library access. This, the Degiorgios claim, constituted "inhuman and discriminatory treatment which find no justi- fication, not in law and neither in morality." Lawyers Leslie Cuschieri and Noel Bianco signed the judicial protest. MATTHEW AGIUS THE judge hearing Repubblika's case for judicial review of the Attorney General's order not to prosecute senior officials at Pila- tus Bank, has revoked a previous order to hear the case behind closed doors. At the start of the sitting, the court, presided by Madam Justice Doreen Clarke revoked a previous order and decreed that the case continue in public. In November 2021, Judge Chris- tian Falzon Scerri, who was later reassigned to other cases, had ordered the proceedings to tem- porarily take place behind closed doors due to separate ongoing proceedings abroad before the World Bank's International Cen- tre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), binding the lawyers and parties present dur- ing the sitting not to reveal what was said. But in a decree handed down on Tuesday, Madam Justice Doreen Clarke implied that the govern- ment's lawyers had misled the court. Quoting from the letter sent to the Maltese authorities by ICSID, the judge said the let- ter "appeared to be a clarifica- tion about how, and from whom, the tribunal's eventual award… should be given publicity." The judge noted that the letter was not a decision by the ICSID tribunal and neither was it bind- ing on how the Maltese courts should hold hearings. "Once the order given by this Court, presided differently on 8 November 2022, appears to have been tied to the alleged obligation of secrecy imposed by the afore- mentioned tribunal, and once no evidence of this obligation has been brought, it does not appear that the continued hearing of this case behind closed doors can continue to be justifed," the judge ruled. In a previous sitting Repubbli- ka's lawyer Jason Azzopardi had accused the State Advocate of wanting to derail proceedings at the eleventh hour by misleading the court with a false allegation about the ICSID ruling. Pilatus director instructed staff to 'minimise interactions with BOV' Repubblika's president, notary Robert Aquilina was then called to the witness stand. He told the court that he had received docu- mentation that showed how the crimes identified in Magistrate Ian Farrugia's Pilatus inquiry had taken place "with the active participation and complicity" of senior officials. The officials had also been identified as culprits in the inquiry and included the bank's owner, Ali Sadr Hasehem- inejad, its operations supervisor Luis Rivera, director Ghambari Hamidreza, supervisor Mehmet Tasli, chief risk officer Antoniel- la Gauci and its money launder- ing reporting officer Claudanne Sant-Fournier. "This leads to the logical con- clusion that there was a criminal conspiracy and that Pilatus Bank and the individual's behaviour formed a criminal organisation," Aquilina said. He added that the expert fi- nancial investigators engaged by the magisterial inquiry, Duff and Phelps had concluded that mal- practices were the bank's stand- ard procedure. "Duff and Phelps had identified two ringleaders - Sadr and Ghambari. They would show [their underlings] what was expected, knew what was going on and actively participated in the criminal activity," Aquilina said. This criminal activity includ- ed onboarding clients without first carrying out the background checks required by Maltese law, the approval of high value trans- actions without verification and the making of false declarations, in particular to correspondent banks, he said. The witness was interrupted by lawyer Fiorella Fenech Vella, rep- resenting the Office of the State Advocate in today's sitting, who objected to Aquilina's testimony on the grounds that he was basing it on "informal documents which could not be exhibited." The judge replied that she would decide on this point after hearing all of Aquilina's evidence. Aquilina resumed his testimony, giving a long list of transactions and alleged misrepresentations made by the bank to the Maltese authorities. "Everything I am say- ing, I have evidence of and have seen with my own eyes," he as- sured the court. One of the incidents described related to a compliance enquiry, which Mehmet Tasli had circu- lated amongst Pilatus Bank staff, received from Bank of Valletta in 2014 on behalf of the Nation- al Bank of Abu Dhabi about a proposed payment between two companies. Bank of Valletta had asked Pi- latus whether the individuals in question had any connection with Sudan, Iran, Syria or North Korea, all of which are blacklist- ed due to international sanctions. The forensic experts from Duff and Phelps had clearly indicated that the ownership of one of the companies in question was Irani- an and had also established a link between Sadr and three Iranian individuals involved in the com- panies. The bank was obliged to point out this fact to BOV, as a subject person for the purposes of Anti Money Laundering legislation. But this step had been blocked before it could happen, Aquilina said. "Sant Fournier had circulat- ed an internal memo with a cate- gorical 'no.'" The witness described several other instances highlighted by the inquiry's experts, including false information Gambari gave BOV when it queried about one of the corporate clients. Fenech Vella raised an objec- tion, pointing out that the inquiry report had not been exhibited in this case. "It is not even exhibited legally," remarked the lawyer, prompting opposing counsel Jason Azzopar- di saying the alleged illegality was solely the fault of the State Advo- cate, who had blocked the exhi- bition of inquiry report in other ways. After BOV had questioned a suspicious transaction, Ghambari had emailed Tasli, Gauci and Ri- vera instructing them to minimise Pilatus' interactions with BOV as much as possible, and ordered that communications with the Maltese Bank should first be ap- proved by him. Judge orders Pilatus Bank nolle prosequi case to continue in public Whitehall Mansions in Ta' Xbiex where Pilatus Bank was headquartered before its licence was withdrawn